“Only…foolin’,” Willie says. He’s learning when to give Lacey a hard time and when to stay clear of him. It’s been a week now and Willie has worked hard for him. Lacey keeps his “management” business away from home, so there’s been nothing to deal with there, and Willie spends most of his time cleaning and making minor repairs he learned to make working around his own house with Big Will in better days. He’s smart enough not to get in Lacey’s way; smart enough to know Lacey has a real mean streak and the best thing to do is stay as far away from it as possible. He still hasn’t figured how Lacey came to let him stay and he doesn’t know how long it will last; he doesn’t ask.
It’s the middle of the day and on the exterior the school appears deserted, but he walks through the entrance, hearing the familiar sounds of “business as usual.” He’s here for a pre-entry interview with the school’s director, a guy named André Porter, who Lacey claims owes him many favors.
Willie hands André the required “résumé” he’s been working on the past few days, detailing what he wants from OMLC and what he believes he has to offer it in return for admittance. André is a tall, rangy black man, built like a racehorse, with long, graceful hands and an easy, reassuring manner that immediately puts Willie at ease. There is no trace of Lacey’s street dialect; this man sounds to Willie as if he were educated in Britain, though he has no English accent.
“You did a good job with this,” he says, smiling, as he lays the paper on the table beside him.
Willie nods. “Thanks.” He did do a good job, and was absolutely straight about the reasons he left home; crystal clear in his final statement that he was not going back to Montana; if he weren’t accepted into OMLC, he would enroll in public school.
“Did Mr. Casteel tell you anything about our school?” André asks, leaning back in his swivel chair, fingers interlaced behind his head.
“Only…that…it’s…a good one.”
“Well, it’s a good one, but it’s a different one,” André says. “Basically we’re here for kids who aren’t making it in the public schools, for whatever reason. That means we’ve got kids with learning disabilities, kids with attitude problems, kids with drug and alcohol problems, and kids whose parents just want them to have more attention than they can get in a class of thirty-five students where at least fifteen are armed and dangerous.” He smiles. “You armed or dangerous?”
Willie puts his arms out, palms up, and looks down at himself with a self-effacing shrug.
“Guess not,” André says. “Now, about tuition.”
Willie looks up in embarrassed silence and swallows. He thought Lacey had worked this part out. Damn it! Lacey knows he doesn’t have any money.
“My best guess would be,” André goes on, “that Mr. Casteel told you I owe him big and my letting you in school here would be an infinitesimal beginning toward repayment. May have even told you he’s my cousin.”
“Something…like that.” Willie guesses Lacey has referred other students here.
André shakes his head in amusement. “Mr. Casteel has what we in the educational community refer to as ‘scrambled brains.’ What I owe him is a long walk off a short pier, blindfolded, with his hands cuffed behind his back and a fifty-five-gallon drum filled with shot puts tied to his ankles.”
Willie says it sounds like the two of them have different perspectives.
“That would be a way to put it,” André says. “And if there were anything even remotely resembling Mr. Casteel in my family tree, I would personally have those branches sawed off and processed into Pres-to logs and toilet paper.” André smiles. “You may have guessed by now that Lacey’s a less-than-reputable member of this less-than-reputable community.”
Willie allows that Lacey is not without his seamier side.
André laughs. “I like you, Willie. With that kind of diplomatic touch, you could be the first OMLC graduate to write copy for the White House. Anyway, Lacey Casteel’s less-than-pristine reputation is none of your concern. Actually, I’m looking for some mellower folks to help balance things out around here, so you might be in luck. I’ve got two full work scholarships open right now. You interested?”
Willie nods, without any idea what that means.
“These work scholarships are a big deal,” André says. “Every kid who goes to school here is either funded by a school district as a ‘special needs’ kid, or he pays tuition. We’re private, nonprofit. That means almost no outside help, so we do our own janitorial work and what maintenance we can. That grassy playground area out there,” he says, pointing out the window, “belongs to the city and is actually classified as a park; but we have an agreement that we’ll keep it up in return for use during school hours. So there’s lots of work to do.”
Willie looks out over the flat area divided into sections of playground apparatus, open grassy areas with benches and tables, a full basketball court and a large patio next to the school. The park is in much better repair than the school building itself.
“One thing you should know,” André says, breaking Willie’s train of thought. “It’s my intention to make this place into something to be proud of, and we can’t be proud if it doesn’t look good. We’ve got a lot of work to do on the building—we’ve only been in here a year, and this place was condemned—and before June of next year I want it looking like a castle. So if you take this scholarship, you’ll have plenty of work to do. And if you slough off on me, I can’t afford to keep you, okay?”
Willie says that’s okay with him. At this point he’s still concentrating on survival and this man is offering something significant.
“And you can tell Lacey Casteel I’m still as soft a touch as ever.” André laughs, then looks at Willie seriously. “I’ve got a feeling, though, that I might be getting the better end of this deal.”
“I…hope so,” Willie says.
“So let me give you the tour.”
The halls of OMLC are dimly lit, with mustard-colored walls and high gray ceilings, but each classroom is well lit from natural light streaming through large windows and decorated in bright colors with posters and charts and paraphernalia pertinent to the discipline being taught there. Students look up curiously, sometimes suspiciously, as Willie and André stand briefly in each doorway; teachers nod and smile, continuing their lessons.
“You may be a little uneasy at first,” André says, back in his office. “Some of these kids seem pretty damaged before you get to know them. Some of them seem pretty damaged after you get to know them, but I’m sure there are friends for you here, and you can get a good education if you want it.”
Willie’s feeling a little confused about what to do. He could go to public school for nothing—not have to work. This place obviously operates on a shoestring; he didn’t see one piece of audiovisual equipment, not even a film projector. There are desks and teachers and books.
For no concrete reason, he trusts André. “Would…you go…here…or…to regular…school…if…you were…me?”
André looks at him; takes him in from top to bottom, honestly considering. “Your résumé says you’re pretty smart but have a hard time showing it because of your ‘handicap,’” he says. “Inner-city schools don’t always have the resources to figure that out. We don’t have a class here with more than twelve kids in it, and at least a third of our teachers have degrees to work with special-needs kids. You won’t get that in public school.” André looks at Willie more seriously. “If you go into a public school, you’ll have to change your act. The way you’re looking right now has ‘victim’ written all over it, and you’d be in the Oakland High district. Takes an act of Congress to go out of district, so you’d be pretty much stuck with O-Hi.” He thinks a second, then says firmly, “I’d go here.”
Willie shrugs. “Here it is.” He’s curious. “Why…OMLC? I mean…why…do they…call it…that?”
“Named after our fictitious founding fathers,” André says. “Owens, McMurray, Lincoln and Caldecott.”
/> “They’re…fictitious?”
“Yeah. Never heard of any of them. Except Caldecott. He has a tunnel named after him. What it really stands for is One More Last Chance.” He laughs. “When we started this place, I kept kicking kids out, then letting them back in, when they begged and pleaded, for one more last shot at it. When we rented the building down by Lake Merritt, we called it Lakeside, which I think was awfully clever, don’t you? The lady I was married to worked with me then. She named it. She had the imagination of an artichoke, but that’s another story. Anyway, when we moved up here, I wanted to give us a name that meant something, so I did. Board thought it was a great idea.”
With a loud crack, the door flies open; a tall, gangly blond kid slides around the door jamb and turns to face André, his back to Willie. His collar is buttoned right up to the top; his shirt tail half in, half out. The metal tip of his too-large cowboy belt whacks against the door jamb as he turns. He wears a full set of telephone repair tools on his hip, giving him the appearance of an AT&T gunslinger from outer space. “This school is a chicken-shit rip-off!” he booms in a deep bass voice that belies everything about his appearance.
André’s head jerks up, surprised, but he regains his composure almost instantly. “Hi, Jack,” he says. “This is Willie Weaver. He’s looking around to see if he wants to go to school here.”
Jack turns his head to Willie, seeming startled to realize there’s someone else in the room, then snaps his head back around to face André. “This school is a chickenshit rip-off,” he says again.
“You’re here to tell me something more specific than that,” André says.
Jack stops to think, looking a little stunned. “This school is a chickenshit rip-off,” he says once more, his voice even deeper. This guy could be an opera singer, Willie thinks absently, and sits waiting to find out why the school is a chickenshit rip-off.
“You don’t pay any money to go here, Jack,” André says. “How is it we’re ripping you off?”
“You said it was safe.”
“Somebody teasing you again?”
Jack gives a big nod in the affirmative. “Joel. He’s a butt. He’s a dirty butt. He’s a filthy, slimy butt.” Jack begins to delight himself with the possibilities, forgetting for a moment why he stormed in. “Joel is a filthy, putrid, slimy—”
“That’s enough,” André breaks in. “We get the point. What did he do?”
“My nose.”
André nods. “He said it was too big?”
Jack nods back. “He’s a filthy, stinking—”
“Hey, Jack,” André says, “give me a break. Joel’s a butt, okay?”
“Yeah,” Jack says, “a stinking, putrid, filthy—”
André has worked his way over to Jack and simply clamps his hand over Jack’s mouth. “Your mom let you talk like that at home?” he asks.
Jack stops, seemingly stunned again. “You gonna tell her?”
“Do I need to?”
Jack’s head shaking “no” is more like a vibration than a recognizable gesture.
“All right, then,” André says. “Lighten up. What did we decide we were going to do the next time Joel said your nose was too big?”
Willie involuntarily pictures the scene in Mr. Small’s office if some kid from Coho High stormed into the principal’s office loudly declaring the value of the school in the currency of chicken waste. He shudders. This experience at OMLC will be different.
Jack’s lost expression says he doesn’t remember.
“What does Joel want when he does that?” André asks.
“To make me mad.”
“Right. And when it works, when you get mad, who wins?”
“That filthy, putrid—”
“Joel. Right. If he doesn’t make you mad, who wins?”
“Me.”
“Right again,” André says. “Who do you want to win?”
“Me,” Jack answers definitely.
“So what do you have to do?”
Jack smiles. “Whistle Dixie. Walk off. Mark up a win.” Obviously André’s terms.
“Okay,” André says, sitting back in his chair. “Get back out there and win one for the bitcher.”
Jack is charged. He performs something close to an about-face and marches out the door. André lets out a big sigh and shakes his head, smiling over at Willie. “Tunnel vision,” he says. “Jack can’t focus on anything when something’s bothering him. He’s a whiz with telephones, though. Only kid I ever met who actually wants to grow up to be a telephone repairman.”
Willie smiles, looking out the empty doorway.
“Don’t judge the place by Jack,” André says, reading Willie’s mind. “We only have a couple of those real exotic flowers. And it kind of adds a flavor to the place.”
Near midnight, Willie lies in his makeshift bed at Lacey’s place counting the rainbow dots on the wall and ceiling created by the streetlight shining through raindrops on the window, aching for Jenny, and Coho; his real life. The urge is overwhelming to call her on the phone, or at least to call Johnny, and tell them where he is; that he’s all right and doesn’t want them to worry; to leave a message for his mom and dad saying he loves them; something. He knows he can’t—won’t. Not yet, at least. He wonders if Jenny will ever realize that telling him the truth was way more important to him than whether or not she went for someone else; he’d been so tired of having to read people rather than having them come out and say what was on their minds; and that’s the one place he needed her to be different. He wonders, too, if the poor kid in the Portland bus terminal ever mailed his postcards from Phoenix.
And suddenly there’s Missy, his baby sister who never did anything with her life but suck her fingers and make funny noises and drool. He sees her lying there in the crib, smiling around her fist, looking right into his soul. There was such a clear, wonderful connection there. Willie would protect her as she grew; shield her from the tough times. They both knew that. Then, as instantly and irretrievably as the tip of a water ski cracking into a promising young athlete’s head, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Willie was embarrassed back then to tell his parents how he sometimes sat in her room looking down at her, his index finger tightly clutched in her tiny hand, planning for her life. And now he’s just another death in the family.
CHAPTER 14
“So find your center,” Lisa says, and Willie watches the kids lined up in rows in front of her close their eyes and feel for a spot somewhere just above the navel. What he doesn’t notice is that the spot is different on each person. “Now picture yourself playing whatever game you’re choosing today,” she says, pausing to give them time to form it behind their closed eyes, “and see yourself making every move from your center. Your center moves first, then the rest of your body follows. Your arms and legs don’t get away from you that way. You play under control.”
Willie isn’t enrolled in this class, which is all-school PE. He has an agreement with André to stay out of PE until he’s ready, or for three weeks, whichever comes first; so this is a study time for him. He’s decided that if he has to be in PE eventually, he’d better come out and look; see what he might be able to salvage out of it. PE holds the threat of extreme embarrassment.
“Okay,” Lisa is saying. “Basketballers on the court, soccer on the west, Ultimate Frisbee on the east. Those of you who said you want to run have a course laid out.” She smiles. “I believe, children, that I have found a way, with the help of neighbors and local merchants, to make sure you run the whole course. I want each of you to take one of these three-by-five cards with you when you go. When you come back, I want the initials of Mr. or Mrs. Jameson—that’s the elderly couple at 1014 Sinto; one of them will be on the porch—somebody at the doughnut shop next to the mall, and somebody at the Michelin Tire store on Broadway and Cedar. They all know the deal. If you don’t have the initials, you don’t get credit for the day. I refuse to give you high-school credit for walking over to the park to smoke dope.”
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br /> There are a few protests, but they die quickly; Lisa has been around long enough that no one expects to change her mind.
Some of the kids wear shorts, or some form of gym gear; others remain in street clothes, but the one requirement is that everyone participates in something. The soccer field has no side boundaries and there seems to be no limit to the number of players on a side, so within minutes the game takes on a chaotic structure focused only on getting the ball from one end of the park to the other and between the two fluorescent cones—obtained from the California Highway Department at drastically reduced prices—which represent goals. The only obstacles more treacherous to the ball handler than the defensive players are the players on his or her own team, each of whom has an almost manic inner drive to score. Pelé would not recognize this game.
Ultimate Frisbee, a kind of cooperative volleyball game played with a plastic disk, is quieter but structured much the same. No matter how carefully he watches, Willie still can’t discern what measures success. The basketball game is more recognizable: full court, no referee but with offensive players calling the fouls. It’s run-and-gun street ball, and some of the players are really talented athletes, though Willie sees none of the discipline he’s used to from his years and years in organized sports. Lisa, stripped down to T-shirt and shorts, plays point guard on one of the teams. She’s kicking butt. Most of the players on the court are faster and most can certainly jump higher, but Lisa never tries anything she doesn’t already know she can do. If the shot isn’t there, she passes. She gets all the garbage rebounds: any-and everything that comes off the rim funny; a sixth sense tells her where it will be. She knows where the ball is all the time and she knows where everyone else on the court is. Willie recognizes something in her play that reminds him of himself when he played sports; it’s the thing that made him better than all the others, gave him a constant edge. He watches the game, anticipating Lisa’s moves, and more often than not he’s right. He can almost feel himself moving with her.